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Michael Klassen has never met Daniel Jansson. OK, you’re thinking, why should he? But given that Jansson is the singer in his band, it is kind of weird. Well, unconventional certainly. Klassen plays guitar, bass and provides other instrumentation in Culted, working out of Winnipeg, Canada, with Kevin Stevenson (Drums), Matthew Freisson (guitar/bass/other) and Erik…

Nope that’s not some new super-group featuring Powermad guitarist, Todd Haug, pictured above. OK, yes that’s Haug front and center, but this brootal crew is actually a confab of brewers and an artist who have come together to create a brand new beer called BLAKKR. From left to right we have Michael Berglund, Surly artist-in-residence;…

I discovered Brazil’s Hellbenders the old fashioned way: their U.S. publicist pointed me in their direction. However, instead of doing what I normally do and ignoring the histrionic pitch (which, after having the band described as Brazil’s answer to Kyuss/High on Fire/stoner/desert rock, would have been the logical thing to do), I bit. And man,…

Last week, Junius helped celebrate the upcoming release of its excellent new EP, Days of the Fallen Sun, by having half of the band–namely, frontman/guitarist Joseph E. Martinez and bassist Joel Munguia–tell us about eight records that they were listening to back when things started in 2004. Now that everyone has (hopefully) had a chance…

Live in California or fancy travel? The second Brainsqueeze Fest is coming to Oakland in April via our friends at Tankcrimes. Get your super passes now and check out the sick running order below. Decibel is happy to premiere the new ad as well. Friday 4/18 – Oakland Metro – all ages, bar w/ ID…

Last summer, the young bucks in Fatality wrote a cogent piece for the Deciblog on how you can successfully crowdfund a project without pissing off fans. As a result, we got to know bassist Adam Zed pretty well and found him to be a likeable and hilarious chap. Then, he approached the Deciblog about doing…

What a difference 16 years can make; there were probably more people at Failure’s first reunion show than bought their last album, 1997’s Fantastic Planet. The (mostly white male) fans packed into the El Rey Theater in their hometown of Los Angeles last Thursday night, February 11, for an evening with the heavy rock heroes….

Just as much as metal needs its forward thinkers, it also needs its defenders of the faith. Traditionalism in heavy metal is equally as important as progression, and in this day and age where young bands foolishly mistake “extreme” one-upmanship as being the most important tenet of the genre – sorry kids, power is paramount…

We’re exactly one month out from the release of Immortal, the sicker-than-a-resurrected-centurion-werewolf debut blaster from Sacramento death metallers Alterbeast, and to whet your appetite the band has graciously sent over an exclusive stream of a sonic power-up called “Vile Remnants.” Check the track out below, pre-order the record here, and, for the youngsters, check out…

Prizehog’s fourth album is called Re-Unvent the Whool. That should give you an idea of just how weird these weirdos are. They come from Portland, because of course. Disconnected sludge floating in an abyss of fuzz, “Shed” is a pretty good example of what you’re going to get when you contaminate your turntable with the…

The True Mayhem. Ground zero for Norwegian black metal. Since 1984, the Oslo-based outfit has made waves. Though it would take a good number of years—about three, actually—before Deathcrush hit posers hard, the group’s coup de grace was posthumous debut album, De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas. With Euronymous dead and the Norwegian scene reeling from heavy…

If you don’t live along the east coast of the United States, then maybe you’re having a chest-beating trad metal day, or a beat-on-your-desk black/thrash day, or even a middle-finger-hoisting death metal day.  But if you were in the path of the snow storm that dumped a few lead-heavy white blankets up and down the Eastern Seaboard, then you probably…

What do members of Napalm Death, DragonForce, and Hate Eternal have in common? Normally, we’d have no fucking clue, but today the members premiere a new song from the Mitch Harris-led Menace. Now, most Decibel readers know Mitch Harris. He of Napalm Death. One of the fastest grind guitarists around. But he’s not shredding bar…

What’s up, you loveless fucks? As the year rolls along, so do the new releases — finally, it seems. Here’s my anti-Valentine’s Day rant. Gridlink release Longhena, and this thing is a pecking barn-burner.  Their longest effort to date, this record moves, kicks, and boy does it grind. There is a lot of non-traditional grind…

Last month, Decibel spent a few chilly Baltimore days taking in A389’s 10th Anniversary Bash.  That exceptional label has been responsible for lots of great releases, including #9 on our list of 2013’s best, Noisem’s Agony Defined.  The 4-show festival that celebrated the label and its friends was overwhelming in the number of bands that…

Long before there was a Brewtal Truth column in Decibel or Municipal Waste was celebrating the Art of Partying or Three Floyds was making beers for its favorite metal bands, Bill Yurkiewicz and his grindcore band, Exit-13, were not only drinking amazing beers from around the world, they were writing songs about them. Yurkiewicz, who…

Dodsferd will soon release their ninth album The Parasitic Survival of the Human Race, which promises more punk along with the black. For your streaming pleasure today we have a Misfits cover from the upcoming album (We Are 138), bookended by audio samples from the Greek riots in February 2012. Check it out below and…

I’ve known Nick Sewell, and been aware of his prodigious skill on the bass gee-tar, since the mid-90s. Good Lord! That’s round-and-about 20 real-life years, which is the equivalent of about 2000 musician/band years. In that time, dude has played in some of Toronto’s most notorious metal and hard rockin’ bands, including Tchort, The Illuminati…

  Valentine’s Day is TOMORROW, people. We know you’ve made a reservation for you and your teddy bear in the garage, catered by whatever hasn’t started to reek in the fridge, but what will you guys make small talk about before you take things to the bedroom? As always, Decibel has the answer. Subscribe to…

A few weeks ago, we premiered a track from Junius’s excellent new EP, Days of the Fallen Sun. This year will not only see the release of new tunes from the quartet (in just a few days, no less), but it also marks a celebratory occasion that typically calls for diamond jewelry. Our budget here…

Our friends at Century Media records recently unveiled something incredibly cool: a limited 500-run vinyl pressing of Bolt Thrower’s War Master. Here’s how they describe it: Pressed in a double gatefold format, this special War Master reissue features three sides of “blood-drenched” hymns on red/silver splattered white wax with side 4 being an exclusive etching….

It’s another fairly light week this week – I doubt many Decibel readers will be salivating over the reissue of Def Leppard’s sorry 1996 album Slang – but most interestingly, there’s a good amount of music I actually like. Is it because I’m still a good six weeks away from my annual spring burnout? The…

Tickets for the Miami International Film Festival sure-to-be cacophonous premiere of the documentary International Noise Conference 2013 go on sale this Friday, so it seemed like as good a time as any to check in with director Ronnie Rivera… How did the idea for the doc come about? I have been photographing the noise community…

The latest video from Mantar has something for everyone: shirtless dudes, screaming, wolves, epilepsy-triggering editing. It’s also in black and white, just to give it that extra bit of artsy. Musically, they have some Motor-sludge lovin’ blackness going for them as the dynamic duo as they smash through post-metal, doom, and even some screamo. In…

It’s time to go back, folks. It’s time to wade way, way back into the primordial ooze and sift out a hallowed blast from the past in this exclusive album stream of GreyHaze Records’ reissue of Mystifier’s Wicca. The Brazilian black metal legends released Wicca in 1992, and although it has been rereleased a handful…

With pseudonyms like Hand of Doom, Black String and Command, Sweden’s Vampire immediately evoke early ’80s heavy metal and early mid-’90s black metal. A non-coincidence, really. Vampire’s eponymous debut is the nexus of heavy metal and black metal, where Destruction and Motörhead meets Unanimated and Bewitched. Vampire, however, make the cross-generational/genre melange unique, menacing in…

Monday night. Hours after a severe weather incident. In most cases, a metal show in Philadelphia on such a weeknight after such a crippling storm would’ve kept longhairs and horn throwers home. A venue vacant, save its sadluck staff. Tonight, however, Philadelphians surprised. They came out in droves not just for the headliner, Amon Amarth,…

You know you’re in for some serious black metal destruction when the waveform is a solid block. Entartung have an unpronounceable name and a penchant for German efficiency, one that they put towards killing your eardrums. They’ve built a pretty impressive temple of evil in Peccata Mortalia, their second album. Most of you are snowed…

Athens, GA heavy hitters Woccon are relative newcomers to the metal scene, but they’ve already made an impressive splash with the material they’ve recorded thus far.  Existing at some perfectly logical intersection of prog-friendly melodicism and aggressive doom, Woccon released an EP last year – The Wither Fields – that perked up our ears and gave…

We had tons of juniper bushes in the area we grew up in Colorado, so the smell of gin was familiar to us long before we ever drank it. We used to squish the berries between our fingers and smell their pungent, spicy odor. Sure, not all gin is heavy on the juniper, but it…